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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I'll be the contrarian optimist: Star Trek movies are, on average, bad. Compare Star Trek: Nemesis to an episode of TNG - it's guilty of everything you attribute to the new Star Trek movies. The only reason it got a pass was because of the goodwill that the TNG show garnered for its characters.

So I choose to believe/hope that a TV show isn't doomed to have the same outlook as the movie. I expect I may well be wrong, but...

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Nemesis was rather poorly received among fans of the series. Though honestly, so were most of the other Star Trek films.

Out of the pre-Abrams Star Trek films, four were generally well received (2, 4, 6, 8). The first and third films have a few people who like them, but are broadly disliked. The fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth are almost universally disliked.

Even among the four generally well received films, only #2 (The Wrath of Khan) and #4 (The Voyage Home) are generally considered as good as the best television episodes from the first two series. Maybe #6 fits in there -- that one's actually my favorite, though I might be biased because it's the only TOS one I've seen in theaters.

Not the first time I've heard this odd vs even thing. Was The Voyage Home the one with the whales? That premise was a bit silly although the film had its moments. Which number was First Contact? I always thought that was way better than the others.

Since it was apparently a little confusing:

  1) The Motion Picture: The one with V'Ger
  2) The Wrath of Khan: The one with Khan
  3) The Search For Spock: The one that fixed the problem caused by #2
  4) The Voyage Home: The one with the whales
  5) The Final Frontier: The one of which will not be spoken
  6) The Undiscovered Country: The one with the Khitomer Accords
  7) Generations: The one with both Kirk and Picard
  8) First Contact: The one with the Borg
  9) Insurrection: The one where Picard openly rebels against the exact thing he did in that one episode
 10) Nemesis: The Wrath of Khan with TNG characters, by someone who didn't understand why The Wrath of Khan was good

  11) Star Trek: Kirk gets promoted from Cadet to Captain in one day
  12) Star Trek <missing colon> Into Darkness: Spock is angry

8) First Contact: the one withNO! IT ENDS HERE!! NOW!!

Insurrection is underrated. It's by far the best TNG movie as far as pacing goes. First Contact feels like it is stuttering and I think people like it mostly because the Borg are always a hot topic for Trekkies.

I don't hate Insurrection. It's totally watchable, which is more than I can say for Generations or Nemesis. It definitely has its positives. It has by far the best writing of Data in any of the movies. Picard's love story is pretty well done. I just don't find it quite rises to the level of the four "actually good" movies. The plot only makes sense if you squint really hard.

First Contact did have its fair share of stupid (Borg queen, UGH). I just thought the plot made way more sense than any of the other TNG movies.

Thanks, makes sense now, although those subtitles all sound like unaired episodes of Friends (which I'd definitely watch).

Star Trek movies are, for the most part, action focused instead of story or plot focused. But there have still been some movies that exemplified Star Trek fairly well. The Motion Picture, though much maligned, is a good example, as is Star Trek IV, though it's a bit campy. In Star Trek VI the values of Star Trek come through pretty well.

The movies were different than the TV show but there was still a shadow of the values and intellectualism from the show in the movies. For the modern remakes that's simply completely absent. And imagining that a show made by people who don't understand Star Trek will somehow begin to embody its values and qualities is, frankly, magical thinking.

It'll be fast-paced, it'll be gritty, it'll be dark, it'll be chock full of action and "intrigue" but it'll be brain-dead.

Nemesis didn't get a pass with any fans I know. It's pretty much considered the worst of the first ten movies excluding possibly 5, depending on the fan.

Oh, V was much worse. Much, much worse.

I've had friends put V and X on the same level, but personally I agree.

Insurrection was the closest film to a TV episode.

Insurrection is my favorite of the Star Trek films and I hadn't thought of it that way before but I think you nailed it.

With the exception of Riker steering the Enterprise with that hidden Gravis Blackhawk joystick, it was very much like a feature length episode of the TV series.

Yeah, my favourite too, even though it has low ratings.

> CBS said on Monday, in a new series that will be introduced on the network but will be shown primarily on its digital subscription video service.

I'd love a new series, but CBS showing it mainly on their streaming service and not even on network TV doesn't bode very well.

The Trek movies were all bad, and I think the only ones to get a pass were the even-numbered TOS movies.

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